DOE report provides recommendations to increase recycling, reuse of wind energy equipment

A new report from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) outlines recommendations that could increase the recycling and reuse of decommissioned wind energy equipment and materials to create a more circular economy and sustainable supply chain. The research also reveals that existing U.S. infrastructure could process 90 percent of the mass of decommissioned wind turbines, though new strategies and innovative recycling methods will be needed to process the remaining 10 percent of this material.

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The DOE says its research will help guide more than $20 million in investments previously announced in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to advance technologies that address this gap.

“The U.S. already has the ability to recycle most wind turbine materials, so achieving a fully sustainable domestic wind energy industry is well within reach,” says Jeff Marootian, principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. “Innovation is key to closing the loop, and this research will help guide national investments and strategies aimed at advancing technologies that can solve the remaining challenges and provide more affordable, equitable, and accessible clean energy options to the American people.”

The report, “Recycling Wind Energy Systems in the United States Part 1: Providing a Baseline for America’s Wind Energy Recycling Infrastructure for Wind Turbines and Systems,” assesses research, development and demonstration (RD&D) needs and gaps in existing wind energy-related supply chains to support the transition to a more sustainable and circular U.S. wind energy industry. 

Led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory with support from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, a team of researchers developed the report, which is the first of a suite of reports. This initial report provides DOE’s Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) with short-, medium- and long-term RD&D priorities along the life cycle of wind energy systems. 

According to the report, the effective reuse and recycling of wind system components, parts and materials will rely on a combination of measures:

• improved end-of-life decommissioning collection and scrap sorting practices; 
• strategic siting of recycling facilities;
• expanded and improved recovery and recycling infrastructure;
• substitution of hard-to-recycle and critical materials with more easily separable and affordable materials, improved component designs and manufacturing techniques or the development of modular system components; 
• optimized properties of recovered materials for second-life applications; and
• greater access to wind energy waste streams and the equipment required to disassemble wind energy components. 

Towers, foundations and steel-based subcomponents in drivetrains offer the greatest potential to be successfully recycled, according to the report, whereas blades, generators and nacelle covers likely will prove more difficult. Recovering critical materials and alloying elements from generators and power electronics, such as nickel, cobalt and zinc, will be crucial in establishing a circular economy for wind systems, the researchers add.

Short-term strategies for decommissioning include promoting blade production using more easily recyclable thermoplastic resins and reusing these resins in cement production. Thermoplastic-based blade recycling technologies, such as pyrolysis and chemical dissolution, could be viable medium- and long-term options. Other medium- and long-term solutions include high-yield techniques for separating compounds found in power electronics and hybrid methods for recycling permanent magnets, the report notes. 

Regional factors that include material demand, disposal fees, transportation distances and an available skilled workforce also will play important roles in ensuring the success and cost-competitiveness of recycling wind energy components. 

Funding for wind turbine recycling

Research used to compile this report will guide the development of the Wind Energy Recycling Research, Development, and Demonstration program funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. 

DOE recently announced an investment of $20 million to improve the recycling of wind energy technologies. This effort, which focuses on enabling sustainable wind turbine components, enabling wind turbine material recycling and reuse processes and qualifying recycled and recyclable material, will help increase the sustainability of wind energy materials and bolster the domestic supply chain, according to the DOE. Applications are due Feb. 11, at 5 p.m. ET.

In September 2024, DOE also announced six final winners of the Wind Turbine Materials Recycling Prize. This $3.6 million competition expands domestic capabilities for recycling and recovering wind materials as teams use their winnings to bring their technologies closer to commercialization. The winners, Cimentaire of Houston; Critical Materials Recycling of Boone, Iowa; Fletcher Team of Huntington, West Virginia; GreenTex Solutions LLC of Charleston, South Carolina; United Standard Materials Corp. of Houston; and Wind Rewind of Orono, Maine, received a $500,000 cash award and technical support vouchers to advance their prototypes toward relevant scale demonstration and validation. A Pitch Day event is planned for this year where participants will have the opportunity to present work completed since the close of the prize and demonstrate the commercial potential of their technologies. 

Research for the “Recycling Wind Energy Systems in the United States Part 1: Providing a Baseline for America’s Wind Energy Recycling Infrastructure for Wind Turbines and Systems” report drew from DOE’s Renewable Energy Materials Properties Database (REMPD), which catalogs the type, quantity, availability and properties of materials worldwide needed to construct wind and solar energy technologies. Additional modeling and analysis identified technical, environmental and economic potential and trade-offs related to recycling each of the wind energy components using a range of processes. The team also incorporated scenarios from the corresponding report on the REMPD database.